


Before You Forget

by kythen



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Fantasy, Inspired by Studio Ghibli, M/M, Spirited Away - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 06:03:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kythen/pseuds/kythen
Summary: Spirited Away-inspired AU. There are some memories that always stay with you.While moving back to Miyagi, Daichi loses his son in the forest and goes in search of him, only to find himself in a different world altogether where he meets a certain shadowy spirit.





	Before You Forget

**Author's Note:**

> This was my submission for the HQ Ghibli Zine which was unfortunately discontinued. However, some of the creators are very kindly organising a free PDF to compile all the submissions for the zine, which you will probably find available soon!
> 
> The version that I'm submitting for the zine is a cut version because of word limit constraints but here is the full uncut version of the fic. Enjoy!
> 
> This is a collab with the brillant [matchacha](https://matchacha.tumblr.com) and you can find her artwork [here!](https://matchacha.tumblr.com/post/160811525572/before-you-forget-in-collaboration-with-the)

Daichi wakes up in water and it all comes back to him.

They had been moving, Shouyou and him, packing up their things and driving to Miyagi in Daichi's old, beat-up Honda. Because Shouyou was five and five year olds had unfortunate bladder capacities, he had needed a toilet break in the middle of a long and forested road with not a rest stop in sight. Because Daichi was thirty-two with five years of parenting under his belt, a year of which had been solo parenting, he had recognised that he needed to stop soon, now, _immediately_ before Shouyou caused an accident in the car. So Daichi had swerved off the main road and onto an unassuming dirt path leading into the forest.

He had let Shouyou out just in time and watched him disappear behind a tree not far from the car. But then five minutes passed and Shouyou hadn't come back or responded to Daichi calling his name into the forest over and over again, and Daichi had gone looking for him. He remembers the rest in bits and pieces—tearing through the forest in search of Shouyou, finding himself at the edge of a ravine, and then the wind rising.

Then he woke up, even if he doesn't remember falling unconscious in the first place. Shouyou is still nowhere in sight and Daichi groans, pulling himself out of the shallow water he had been lying in.

"Hello," a voice says from behind him.

Daichi twists around and there, at the edge of the water, is a shadow perched smugly on dry land. Daichi sees a smirk before the rest of the speaker, the shadows falling away to reveal a man, long-limbed and finely built, his loose robes pulled around a lean frame. He makes no move towards Daichi but he looks expectantly at him as if awaiting a reply to his abrupt greeting.

"Lost?" the stranger prompts as Daichi opens his mouth soundlessly, still trying to make sense of the situation.

"Shouyou," Daichi blurts out as his priorities finally fall into place. He pushes himself up on his hands and knees, digging his feet into the soft earth as he stands.

"Lost something?" the stranger says sympathetically, his eyes, dark and catlike, boring into Daichi. "Or someone?"

"Shouyou," Daichi repeats, more to himself than the stranger. "He's my son. Have you seen him?"

"I don't know what your son looks like," the stranger says logically.

"He's five. He has orange hair and he only comes up to about this high." Daichi raises a hand to his waist.

"You look a little young to be having a son so big," the stranger says sceptically. Then he shrugs. "But if you say you have a son, who am I to say otherwise? Besides, I may have seen a boy fitting that description around."

"Where is he?" Daichi asks, lurching towards the stranger with a renewed urgency. "Can you bring me to him?"

"Sure, given that he's still there." The stranger turns away as Daichi reaches him. "Follow me."

\---

There is a castle in the distance, old and ornate, a solid dark shape sitting serenely in the midst of a patchwork quilt of green. Nothing around him looks like the road they had come from and Daichi begins to feel like he has stepped into another world entirely, a world out of line with the world he has known all his life.

They grow tea here, the stranger explains as he leads Daichi through the fields of _camellia sinensis_ , or tea plants. The castle up ahead is a tea house where tea is processed and packaged, sold and served. It never gets closer regardless of how much they walk and Daichi suspects that the stranger has been avoiding it, taking the paths that lead around it and not towards it.

"Once you find your son, you should leave. Immediately," the stranger says casually, even though it sounds like a clear warning to Daichi. "You're disrupting our work."

"We will," Daichi promises, turning his eyes away from the tea house. "We weren't supposed to stop here for long."

The path slopes under their feet but the stranger doesn't break pace as he leads Daichi up and over a short hill, leaving the tea house behind. At the base of the hill, the stranger halts abruptly. Daichi catches up with him and follows his gaze to a small, orange-haired boy before them.

"Shouyou—"

The cry dies in Daichi's throat as he sees a creature crouching over Shouyou, a massive silver lion easily twice as large as the lions he has seen at the zoo with Shouyou. There is something like curiosity in the way it looks at Shouyou, who looks back at it with the same curiosity and without fear. But Daichi's heart is in his throat and he fears plenty for Shouyou as he darts forward to get him away from the lion. A vicelike grip closes itself around Daichi's forearm, stopping him from going to Shouyou's side just as a new voice trills through the air.

"Lev!"

A girl heads towards Shouyou and the lion, her skirts hiked up in her hands as she runs. Her hair, pale blond and plentiful, coils around her head in an intricate pattern, held up by a black ribbon that weaves itself into her braids. The lion perks up as she approaches it, turning its attention away from Shouyou as she stops before it and runs her hands affectionately through its silver mane.

"Oh, who's this?" Daichi hears her say as she notices Shouyou. "A friend of yours, Lev?" The lion growls and the girl smiles at Shouyou, bending at the knees to look at him. "You're Shouyou? It's very nice to meet you."

Then she straightens up and turns her gaze on Daichi. Her eyes are mismatched, one brown, one blue, both piercing, and her voice carries clear across the distance, sweet and surprised as she asks, "Kuro? You have a friend too?"

The stranger—Kuro—tightens his grip on Daichi's arm and takes a step forward, smiling amiably. "This is Shouyou's father, Lady Alisa."

"Are you now?" Alisa clasps her hands before her. "It's very nice to meet you, Shouyou's father. You have a lovely son. My Lev has taken quite a liking to him."

Daichi returns her smile. "Shouyou has always been great at making new friends. But you see, we were on our way to our new home so I'm afraid that we have to leave now."

"Leave?" Alisa asks, wide-eyed. "Nonsense. I haven't seen Lev this happy in ages. Shouyou will have to stay."

"But—"

"You're welcome to stay too, Shouyou's father," Alisa says dismissively, her attention already slipping away from Daichi. "But I'm afraid that you have no reason to and if you must stay on, you will have to work."

Daichi opens his mouth and Kuro tugs at his arm fiercely.

"Don't," Kuro says quietly. There is a strain in his voice that hadn't been there previously, his face tense as he holds his smile in place. His grip on Daichi's arm had turned painful once Alisa showed up, his fingers sure to leave marks on Daichi's skin after he lets go.

Daichi glances at Shouyou, who hadn't once looked his way this whole time, his face turned up towards the lion and his small hands fisted in its fur. The lion tosses its head, sensing Daichi's gaze and turning sharp green eyes on him, its mouth opening in a faint growl.

"I'll work," Daichi says and Kuro relaxes his grip on him.

"Magnificent!" Alisa claps her hands. "Kuro will show you what to do. Now, if you would excuse us."

She beams at Daichi before turning away in a swish of her skirts. The lion nudges Shouyou with its nose, lowering its massive head to let Shouyou clamber onto its back. It moves into a trot at Alisa's side, the both of them headed for the tea house and taking Shouyou with them.

"Shouyou," Daichi calls out softly but Shouyou doesn't turn back.

"Not now," Kuro murmurs in his ear. "You can't go against Alisa. She's the witch of this domain and as long as you're here, you can't do a thing to her. She could get rid of you all too easily."

"Then what do I do?" Daichi grits out as he watches Shouyou disappear into the distance.

"Work." Kuro shrugs, his eyes apologetic. "And wait."

\---

Daichi is eighteen and he blinks at his reflection because he hasn't been eighteen in fourteen years.

"What's wrong? Do the clothes not fit?" Yui asks as she comes through the door and sees Daichi staring at the mirror.

"No, they're fine," Daichi says haltingly. "It's just that... I don't think I'm the right age?"

"We all have those days," Yui says sympathetically before hustling Daichi out of the door. "Let's get going! It's your first day here and there's lots of ropes to be shown!"

Yui leads the way up the stairs, out of the basement and through a back door that opens up into the endless fields outside. She emerges into the sunlight before Daichi does, turning around with her hands on her hips and a wide smile on her face. She wears the same clothes that Daichi had just changed into, a loose _jinbei_ -style uniform in a deep dyed blue, just like any of the other workers out in the tea fields. When Daichi had asked, Yui said she couldn't remember when she had started working here or anything about a time before that.

Daichi thinks about her response late into the night after his first day at work. After Yui had shown him what to do, it was simple enough to catch on, his hands moving mechanically through the plants and stripping them of their leaves. There would always be work every day, Yui had explained, because the leaves grew back overnight through the power of Alisa's magic.

Yui had spoken about magic so casually, as if it was a completely natural part of life here, and it only drives home the fact that Daichi is truly a long way from home. There is a part of him still convinced that this is only a dream and he will wake up to Shouyou right next to him. But most of him has gone cold with dread, a sick feeling rising in his stomach as he realises that he may never get to see Shouyou again and that neither of them might ever leave this strange and confusing other world.

"Daichi," a voice calls softly from outside his sleeping quarters. "Come outside."

Daichi lifts his head and sees a shadow on the paper door unfurl into a familiar lanky shape. He glances at the sleeping heads beside him and back at Kuro's shadow. Then he rises, careful to make as little noise as possible as he slips outside.

Kuro moves as soon as Daichi steps foot into the corridor, speaking quickly and quietly, "I'm taking you to see Shouyou."

"Where is he?"

"He's in Alisa's quarters. That's where Lev is so that's where Shouyou will be." Kuro ushers Daichi across the corridor and into an elevator.

"When you say that Alisa is a very powerful witch," Daichi asks carefully as the elevator ascends, "how powerful is she exactly?"

"Don't even think about it, Daichi," Kuro says sharply. "She'll know that we're in her quarters and she'll tolerate it as long as we don't make Lev upset."

Daichi's mouth twists unhappily as the elevator comes to a stop and Kuro shows him out of the elevator and into a winding maze of corridors. Kuro stops before a pair of double doors, placing a hand on its gilded doorknob and easing the door open, just wide enough for Daichi and him to slip in. They enter into a pitch-black darkness, cool and claustrophobic, and Kuro takes Daichi's hand, squeezing it reassuringly before leading him deeper into the room.

"Close your eyes," Kuro whispers and Daichi complies.

A warm glow hits his closed eyelids and when Daichi opens his eyes, a nightlight on the wall gives off a tiny light, dimly illuminating a small, orange-haired boy curled up on a bed.

"Shouyou!" Daichi starts moving towards him before Kuro pulls him back.

A snarl fills the room and Daichi looks up into jade green eyes, glaring down at Daichi from beyond the reach of the nightlight. Kuro grips Daichi's shoulder tight and takes a step backwards, gradually moving him away from boy and lion.

"Shouyou's safe," Kuro murmurs. "Lev likes him so he'll be under his and Alisa's protection. Unfortunately, that protection doesn't quite extend to you, Daichi."

Lev snarls again as if in agreement and Kuro shifts his grip to Daichi's hand, the room going dark again as Kuro shuts off the nightlight. Daichi follows him blindly, numbly, barely able to feel the pressure of Kuro's hand in his as they pass through the double doors again.

"I'll bring you to see Shouyou every night," Kuro tells him as they retrace their steps back to Daichi's sleeping quarters. "Every night," Kuro repeats as he pushes Daichi through the gap in the paper doors. "Don't forget."

\---

"Daichi, wake up," a voice startles him out of sleep and Daichi opens his eyes to see a shadow looming over him. "It's Kuro. I'm bringing you to see your son, Shouyou."

Daichi blinks and the shadow is gone, waiting for him on the other side of the door. Daichi drags on his clothes, his limbs heavy with fatigue, before stepping out into the corridor.

Kuro comes for him every night as promised, even if Daichi can't quite remember how many nights it has been in between the blur of work in the day and visiting Shouyou at night. It has been getting harder to remember by each passing day, to remember to stay awake while everyone else drifts off to sleep, to remember _why_ he had to stay awake while everyone else was asleep.

Shouyou is always asleep when Daichi sees him. He hasn't seen Lev around since the first night but he knows that he is in the room somewhere, ready to pounce if Daichi makes any move to take Shouyou away. Lev isn't ready to give Shouyou up yet, Kuro had said, but just give him a bit more time.

"Shouyou," Daichi murmurs to himself as he gazes down at the sleeping boy.

Shouyou stirs, turning over in bed, and Daichi freezes.

"Shouyou, time to get up," Daichi calls softly, his heart pounding in his chest.

Shouyou's face scrunches up, his arms stretching high above his head before he blinks, his sleepy eyes searching the room.

"Shouyou!" Daichi drops to his knees at the edge of the bed. "How have you been?"

"'m fine," Shouyou mumbles blearily, his eyes focusing on Daichi's face. "Who are you?"

Daichi falters.

A hand drops onto Daichi's shoulder and he hears Kuro's voice in his ear, "Daichi, let's go."

"Not yet," Daichi tells him and tries again. "I'm your dad, Shouyou."

Shouyou stares back at him, confused.

A snarl fills the room and Daichi looks up to see jade green eyes on the other side of the bed, much closer than before. A massive paw sinks into the bed, making a crater in the sheets that sends Shouyou sliding down towards it. Shouyou grabs onto Lev's leg, patting it in concern as he looks at the lion towering above him.

"Whoa, Lev," Shouyou says before turning back to Daichi sheepishly. "Sorry, he's mad for some reason so I think you should leave."

"He's right." Kuro tugs on Daichi's arm, throwing a glance at the darkness behind Lev. "Let's go, Daichi."

"Wait." Daichi shakes Kuro off and reaches for Shouyou, meeting Lev's eyes fiercely. "What did you do to him?"

Lev snaps his teeth at him, a growl building up in his throat as he crouches. But Daichi doesn't care about him now, his attention fixed on Shouyou. Lev leaps at him, his cavernous mouth opened wide, and Kuro grabs Daichi, wrapping a shadow around them and pulling Daichi away from Shouyou.

Daichi lands in water, disorientated and suddenly soaked. Kuro stands right by the edge of the water, his hands braced on his knees and scowl spread across his face like a thundercloud.

"Are you trying to get killed, Daichi?" Kuro snaps at him.

Daichi lurches to his feet and faces Kuro. "Why didn't Shouyou remember me?"

The scowl drops off Kuro's face and his face goes blank.

"Is it because he doesn't recognise me when I look like this?" Daichi asks, looking down at himself in his too young body. "Was it too dark in the room? Has it been too long since he's last seen me?"

Daichi looks up at Kuro and Kuro won't meet his eyes. He is hiding something—he always is. Daichi never understood why Kuro had helped him from the start or why he takes Daichi to visit Shouyou every night when he never had a reason to. Kuro could have stopped at any time. He could have let Lev rip Daichi apart or let Daichi forget all about Shouyou.

"How long has it been since we've been here, Kuro?" Daichi asks. He knows that Kuro has been helping him hold on to his memories, so that he doesn't end up like Yui, but what is the point when Shouyou doesn't remember who he is?

"It's Alisa," Kuro says abruptly. "Shouyou and you paid a toll for crossing over into her domain safely. That's why you lost all those years and that's why Shouyou doesn't remember you. She probably took away the time you spent together."

"How do I get it back?" Daichi asks, running a hand over his face and suddenly feeling too old for this. "She can't take Shouyou away from me—he's all I have left."

"You can't." Kuro admits. "It's how she keeps people here."

Daichi glances at him sharply, his anger flaring up at Kuro's defeated tone and his admission that everything he had been doing up to now could have been for nothing. But it all dies away when Daichi realises that Kuro isn't looking back at him, his eyes shadowed as he looks out at the water. It never occurred to Daichi that Kuro could have been someone like him, like Shouyou and Yui, who entered Alisa's domain one day and never found their way back home again.

"What did she take from you?" Daichi asks softly.

"I don't know," Kuro says to the water. "I don't remember."

Daichi faces the water again and looks into the far distance. The moonlight draws a line across the horizon, neatly bisecting the distance into a shimmering stretch of water and an endless spread of stars in the sky. He can't go back to the tea house now, not after his run-in with Lev and not with the thought of Shouyou not being able to recognise him.

Daichi kicks off his sandals and rolls his pants up to his knees before he heads out into the water.

"Daichi, what are you doing?" Kuro asks, startled.

"I'm going to find a way out of here and then I'm going to take Shouyou out of this place."

"There's nothing there! Daichi, get back here!"

Daichi glances back to see Kuro poised at the edge of the water, his body straining out over its moonlit surface but his feet still stuck firmly to the ground.

"Daichi!" Kuro calls, frustrated.

Daichi keeps going. Kuro falls silent behind him and Daichi thinks that Kuro has finally given up on him this time when something knocks into his back, almost sending him falling forward into the water.

When he looks back, a massive black cat gazes down at him, its golden eyes narrowed in frustration. It is a beautiful creature, smaller than Lev, but sleek and finely built, its dark coat glimmering under the moonlight. But there is something odd about it and when Daichi runs his eyes over it again he realises that it doesn't have a tail.

"Kuro?" Daichi reaches out to touch its nose and the cat recoils, scrunching up its face in distaste. It ducks its nose under Daichi's arm, nudging him in the ribs and Daichi pushes its head away. "Yeah, it's you."

Kuro huffs out a cat laugh before he tosses his head meaningfully, directing Daichi's attention to his back.

"So there _is_ something out there," Daichi remarks, gazing across the water. "Someone? Will they be able to help?"

Kuro's shoulders ripple in a shrug. He gestures at his back again impatiently and Daichi complies this time, climbing up on his back.

"You know where you're going, right?" Daichi asks and Kuro huffs again before setting out across the water at a trot, gradually breaking into a run as Daichi adjusts to being on his back.

"You know, I used to know a cat once," Daichi says, leaning forward into Kuro's back and closing his eyes against the stinging wind, his arms sinking into Kuro's surprisingly soft fur. "He was black just like you, only that he had a tail, and he used to sit on the curb just by the front gate after school like he was waiting for me. He wasn't mine but I gave him a name and it actually sounds pretty similar to yours. I called him Kuroo for the long, black tail he had."

"I'm not making fun of you," Daichi clarifies to Kuro's silence. "I'm just reminiscing, before I forget. I don't know what happened to Kuroo after I graduated from high school. I should have gone to see him before I moved away."

Kuro doesn't say anything to that either—or maybe he can't, not as a cat—and Daichi spends the rest of their journey in silence, sneaking peeks at the changing landscape.

"Where are we?" Daichi asks, sitting up on Kuro's back and taking a look around.

The shore looms before them and Kuro heads straight for land, pelting across the water in a great few leaps and shaking Daichi right off his back. Daichi drops into dirt and grass, which is a welcome change from being plunged into water but still overall unnecessary. When he turns to scowl at Kuro, he sees the return of his smirk and the rest of him as a fully formed human stepping delicately out of the water. Smirking, Kuro offers him a hand and Daichi gives him a flat look before getting up by himself.

The place that Kuro had brought him to looks like a deserted island, a sprawling jungle in contrast to the neat green fields of Alisa's domain. The oversized ferns before them rustle, which is all the warning they get before a tiger leaps out at them. Like all the other cats Daichi has encountered so far, it is bigger than the ones he is used to and he steps back as it turns its sloe black eyes on him, its mouth open in a roar.

"Tora!" Kuro pushes the tiger's head aside with a hand, cutting it off mid-roar. "Where's Yaku?"

"Yaku? Why are you looking for Yaku?" a girl's voice comes from behind the tiger.

She emerges from the same ferns the tiger had leapt out from and the tiger turns in a circle to walk beside her, clearly sulking. She looks at them squarely, a no nonsense attitude in her gaze and the way she dresses, her robes simple but pretty and her sleeves tied up and out of her way.

Kuro bows his head to her as he whispers to Daichi, "This is Akane. We're in her domain."

"Is she a witch too?" Daichi asks warily.

"Yes, she is," Kuro replies. "But she's different from Alisa." To the waiting Akane, he introduces, "This is Daichi. Lev's got his son and won't let him go."

"Another one?" Akane sighs before turning to the tiger. "Tora, go get Yaku."

As the tiger bounds off into the wilderness, Akane turns her gaze onto Kuro shrewdly. "And? What about you, Kuro? Why are you here?"

"Just stretching my legs," Kuro says breezily.

"That's a pretty dangerous way of stretching your legs," Akane says, her eyebrows raised high. "You know Alisa—"

"What did Lev do again this time?" another voice cuts in, sharp and snappish, accompanied by the breaking and cracking of twigs and bracken underfoot.

An average-sized cat storms out of the ferns, its tail bristling and eyes blazing. Daichi blinks down at it, surprised to find that normal cats do exist here after all. The cat whips around to stare up at him, its golden-brown eyes narrowed in confusion. Then it turns to Kuro, frowning as it says, "What the hell are you doing here, Kuro?"

"That's Yaku. He's the one we need," Kuro stage-whispers to Daichi. Then he gestures towards Daichi as he turns to Yaku. "This is Daichi. Lev's got his son and won't let him go."

"Another one?" Yaku runs his eyes over Daichi, assessing.

"Will you help us?" Kuro asks.

"Not _you_ when you won't even help yourself," Yaku says scathingly to Kuro. "But him, yes."

\---

"Lev!" Yaku roars inside the confined room, his voice surprisingly booming for a smaller cat. "Lev, you sorry excuse for a lion, what's this I hear about you kidnapping children again?"

The silver lion peeks out from the darkness, his jade eyes disbelieving as he sees Yaku.

"Go," Kuro urges, pushing Daichi towards the bed as Lev bounds towards Yaku. "Lev won't care about Shouyou now that Yaku is here."

Shouyou stays asleep as Daichi scoops him off the bed and bundles him up in his arms. It feels like forever since he has carried Shouyou like this and it feels right, safe and warm and so familiar that he can't fight off the surge of emotion that rises in him.

"Get out of here." Kuro's hand is at his back, turning him away from the bed. He throws a nervous glance across the room and Daichi follows his gaze.

Without Lev blocking the way, Daichi sees what Kuroo sees: a door right across from them, standing ajar. Muted light spills through the gap between the door and its doorframe, illuminating a lady's room—a bed with curtains drawn around it, an elegant dress hanging off a clothes stand next to it and a black ribbon coiled around the end of the stand.

Kuro jerks Daichi away, breaking his gaze.

"Wait," Yaku interrupts them. "Daichi, take Kuro along with you."

Kuro's eyes flash. "No."

Yaku looks disdainfully at him before he continues, "This idiot here, he gave up something of his to Alisa in exchange for staying in her domain. He can't leave her domain—or he _wasn't supposed to_ —or the contract is off. He's lost her protection. Now he'll have to give her something else or leave."

"I'll give her something else," Kuro snaps. "Don't drag Daichi into this."

"He was in this from the start whether you like it or not."

Kuro ignores Yaku, dragging Daichi back to the double doors they had come through. Kuro has the right idea and Daichi should be listening to him and getting out of here with Shouyou while he can. But there is something about Yaku's words that sticks.

"Cooperate with me, Daichi," Kuro grits out. "Take Shouyou and go back to Miyagi."

Everything falls into place and Daichi digs his heels in, turning to face Kuro with certainty. "You're Kuroo, aren't you?"

Kuro flinches, his hands falling away from Daichi. He doesn't meet Daichi's eyes as he says, just like that time by the water, "I don't know. I can't remember."

Daichi can feel Yaku watching them, silently urging Daichi on. He knows that the door on the other side of the room leads to Alisa's room, which Lev had been guarding before Yaku had distracted him. The witch herself might even be in and Daichi doesn't know a thing about her apart from their first meeting and Kuro's ever-present fear of her.

He hefts Shouyou in his arms, keeping a firm grip on him before he marches up to Alisa's door. As he shoulders his way through the gap, he hears a hiss from behind him—Kuroo—but he doesn't care, his eyes on the only thing that matters in the room. He reaches for the black ribbon at the end of the clothes stand and his fingers brush against a velvet softness, surprising to the touch.

 _"Thief,"_ a damning voice whispers from the bed. The curtains split, revealing nothing but an inky darkness within and a pair of mismatched eyes, one brown, one blue, both piercing.

"It's not yours," Daichi tells her, strangely calm. "Kuroo isn't yours. I named him first."

Daichi snatches the ribbon off the stand and it unravels into a length of endless black, dropping to the floor and coiling around Daichi's feet like a living thing.

"Kuro, get in there!" he hears Yaku shriek and Daichi turns to see Kuroo barrel through the door, his face a sickly white as he throws his arms around Daichi and Shouyou and engulfs them all in a shadow.

Daichi hits the ground and the impact jolts every single one of his senses. They are in the fields, the scent of crushed tea leaves sharp in the air around them.

Kuroo stands right by him, his breathing ragged as he looks into the distance, facing the tea house. As Daichi struggles to his feet under Shouyou's weight, Kuroo looks at him and says, "She cut me off halfway. You'll need to get to the water yourself. If you go far enough, Akane should be able to sense you and she'll get you and Shouyou home.

"What about you?" Daichi asks.

"I'll hold Alisa off."

"While I take Shouyou and run?" Daichi snaps.

"You want to get Shouyou back safe, don't you?" Kuroo points out and Daichi hates him for using Shouyou against him.

The ribbon he had snatched from Alisa is still cool in his hand, its length coiled around his arm and brushing against his legs, draped along the ground among the ruined tea plants. It feels lifeless now but Daichi knows that there is more to it than its use as a hair accessory for a capricious witch.

"Take it." Daichi holds his arm out to Kuroo, showing him the ribbon in his hand.

Kuroo winces at the sight of it. "I'd rather not—"

"Take your damn tail back before I shove it up your ass!" Daichi growls, shaking the ribbon at him menacingly.

Kuroo startles and reaches for the ribbon immediately, properly threatened. Then he bursts out into laughter.

"You're exactly as I remember you." Kuroo smiles fondly as his palm settles over the ribbon.

It moves, coming to life at Kuroo's touch and leaving Daichi to snake around Kuroo's arm. It runs along Kuroo's body, going around Kuroo's waist in loops until it runs out of itself, all of it safely coiled around Kuroo before it fades into him. Kuroo sighs in relief, turning around to look at his backside. When he faces Daichi again, he raises an eyebrow at him, his smile crooked as he says, "Now will you go?"

Daichi hesitates. Then he runs.

He knows the way to the water but he forgets that the fields are magic, Alisa's magic, which grow back every night. Tonight, they grow erratic and angry with their mistress's temper, lashing out at Daichi's legs as he runs through them, their roots tripping him up and their leaves smothering him as he falls. He can't get up with them holding him down and Daichi hugs Shouyou close to him, covering him with his body as the plants swarm around them.

He hopes that he doesn't wake up now.

\---

Daichi wakes up in water and his body aches.

His arms are empty and he sits up frantically. There is no sign of Shouyou anywhere, not in the shallow water he is sitting in or the moss-covered ground before him, bracketed by the ravine.

"Shouyou!" Daichi shouts desperately, his voice echoing through the ravine. _Not again._

"Dad!" a voice answers from behind him and Daichi whips around to see Shouyou sliding down from a steep slope. His eyes are shining as he tells Daichi, "I found a way back to the car!"

Shouyou wades into the water, finding Daichi's hand and pulling at him with both hands until Daichi stands. He doesn't let go of Daichi, slipping his small hand into Daichi's and leading him out of the water, up the steep slope and through the forest.

Shouyou is right and there is the car, the same old, beat-up Honda Daichi has owned for years. He feels like he hasn't seen it in ages and it looks worse than ever with leaves and twigs scattered all over its roof and dust coating the windows thickly. Shouyou runs to the back door, looking back at Daichi expectantly.

Daichi shakes himself out of his daze and goes to catch up with him, opening the back door with a dusty _pop_ for Shouyou to get in.

Then he stops. And stares.

There is a black cat resting comfortably on the backseat, its long, black tail curled around its sleek body. At Daichi's intrusion, the cat looks up, its golden eyes almost bored, before it opens its mouth in a yawn.

**Author's Note:**

> Some trivia about Kuroo's name:
> 
> Kuroo (黒尾) directly translates to "black tail" so if you take away his tail (尾), he's only left with Kuro (黒), which is why he is called Kuro for the first part of the fic.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Find me here: [tumblr](http://kythen.tumblr.com) / [twitter](http://twitter.com/catcrowcalls)


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